


The Theorist

by Guede



Series: Theory [16]
Category: Bend It Like Beckham (2002), Hornblower (TV), King Arthur (2004), Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Bickering, Breaking Up & Making Up, Dating, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Humor, Interracial Relationship, Living Together, M/M, Multi, Philosophy, Polyamory, Roommates, Trapped In A Closet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28640754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: All stages of life come to an end some time. Of course, the thing about life is that it has this funny way of continuing past the end.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere/Lancelot, Galahad (King Arthur 2004)/Mariette (Hornblower), Gawain/Tristan (King Arthur 2004), Jack Hammond/Jess Bhamra
Series: Theory [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058675
Comments: 15
Kudos: 3





	1. Put into Practice

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2007.

Merlin held out the paper at arm’s-length for a few seconds before he put it down. He reached beside him and pulled out a drawer, from which he took a small leather case. After opening it and taking out his glasses, he took some time to deliberately settle them on his nose before beginning to read the paper again. He did that silently, though his lips occasionally moved a little as if repeating a word or two to himself. His fingers seemed to exert the same amount of gentle pressure as they held onto the sides of the paper throughout the process.

Arthur wasn’t normally fidgety, but then, Merlin was a past master at provoking unexpected reactions from a wide range of people. And to be honest, if there’d ever been a situation that justified fidgeting, Arthur believed that this was it.

“This doesn’t explain everything,” Merlin suddenly said. He stayed as he was except for his eyes, which flicked up to peer over the top of the sheet. It was a grandfatherly pose, but he didn’t give off an air that matched.

“No. I’d be happy to discuss the fine details with you as a friend, of course, but I think my letter satisfies all university and other public inquiries into my decision.” They’d had a similar discussion, all wary probing beneath the politesses, when Arthur had first been hired, and Merlin had seemed to understand then that certain matters were best not put into paper. At least as far as the well-being of Avalon College was concerned.

Merlin didn’t look like a fool now, but he also seemed rather unsettled. He even went as far as to shift in his seat, which Arthur had almost never seen him do. “I would like to talk to you more—if I’d known it’d be this sort of meeting, I would have scheduled a longer block of time for it.”

“My apologies. I should’ve given you better notice but…well, honestly, I wasn’t sure if there was any good way to put it,” Arthur said.

Nodding, the other man slowly turned to draw the old-fashioned leather-bound scheduling book he used. “Can we set a further meeting time now, or should I have my secretary talk to your secretary?”

That…well, it had both a joke and a barb wrapped up in it, and Arthur wasn’t quite expecting the second. He’d thought it’d be less sharp, anyway. “No, we can go on ahead now. This evening should be fine for…well, I had other dinner plans but I can cancel them if you don’t want to meet after that time.”

“I think it might be better to do this over a good meal. A full stomach tends to slant perspective,” Merlin muttered. He didn’t qualify his statement as to whether he meant that in a favorable or unfavorable way, but instead went on to suggest various restaurants.

They settled on one and a time, and then Arthur had to go because whoever was next had just knocked on the door. He glanced at his watch as he walked out: just enough time to head over to his office and check his email before tackling the finance department.

His phone rang. He checked the ID, but didn’t recognize it. After a long, wary moment, he pressed to answer the call and put the cell to his ear.

* * *

“It just doesn’t seem proper to me. They keep on professors who are idiots, who bring on lawsuits with the bullshit they spew, and then Arthur’s got to leave?”

Guinevere mistyped, back-spaced and retyped. She finished that line and then tabbed to the next one, but the lump on her office couch kept talking, and talking, and finally she lifted her fingers off the keyboard. “One, he potentially poses a great danger to all the people around him.”

“My old maths teacher did, too. Bastard would wallop us on the shoulders and ears when he thought we were being fresh with him. Drew blood and left bruises and God, did I ever want to sock that arse good—”

“Two, you know how much trust matters to him.”

“And they aren’t going to trust _Arthur_ anymore to do the right thing?”

Some days Guinevere wished she could lock her door. But maintenance and accounting wouldn’t let her install a proper one, and the one she currently had, Lancelot had proved was easy enough to pick several times over. “It doesn’t matter. _He_ thinks they can’t possibly trust him, because he’s got these government intelligence connections. Add that to the history of activist movements on university campuses to get one compromised professor to whom probably half the place has confided all sorts of things. That’s how he sees himself right now.”

Lancelot didn’t say anything. After a moment, Guinevere went back to typing. She paused to consult her notes a few times, but surprisingly enough, got all the way to the end of the form without any more interruptions. Not that that made things much better; she knew it was coming sooner or later, and the longer the silence dragged on, the more she had to clamp down on her own nerves. Damn it, she needed Lancelot to _be_ an idiot so she could slap a lid on him. Otherwise she might not be able to keep herself from going out and doing something stupid.

“…what is he going to _do_?”

She almost breathed a sigh of relief. “What?”

“I mean, he’s a workaholic. It’s his natural state of being. If he can’t teach, and he won’t go back to his old profession, what the hell is he going to do?” Much frantic gesturing of the hands. So much so, in fact, that Lancelot nearly flung himself off the couch.

After some undignified scrambling, he managed to keep his seat. While he was at it, he even pulled himself upright—he almost put his feet up on the glass table, but Guinevere glowered and he put them back down with a pointed thump—to stare hard at her. She eventually figured out that he hadn’t been asking that rhetorically. “You think I know?”

“You seem to have everything else figured out,” Lancelot said, just barely civil.

She rolled her eyes and almost did some hand-waving herself. “Just because I can logically analyze Arthur’s rationale for what he’s already done or told us he’ll do does _not_ mean I can predict what he’ll do next. Or what he’ll want…want to do next.”

That last part had come out as a bit of a surprise. It was true, but…she looked up and saw Lancelot grinning at her, his smile edged with a little ruefulness and a little mockery. “That hurt to admit, didn’t it?”

“You don’t know any better what’s best for him,” she snapped, spinning back to her work. Well, the relief was completely gone now; she was back to wishing Lancelot was out of the room and pestering someone else so she could get through her day and…and…and not have to really think about Arthur. Damn.

“I know he’d better be around for the Islamic Art special exhibit the Met’s putting on this spring. Because I didn’t get behind-the-scenes passes for that to go with just you.” Lancelot dropped his arms to rest on his knees and irritably scuffed at the floor, thus completely missing Guinevere’s attempt to will him into spontaneously combusting. Then he sighed and glanced to the side, absently yanking on his tie. “I just thought he might’ve mentioned something to you. Since he seems to talk about that sort of thing with you.”

He sounded a little…chagrined, surprisingly enough. When Guinevere looked over, Lancelot only met her eyes for a moment before jerking his head back aside, cheeks slightly pinked. Her turn to grin. “You know, it’d help if you didn’t mock his philosophy, his profession and his students every chance you got.”

“It’s academia! It mocks itself!” Lancelot protested, though not terribly strongly. He slightly turned back. “…so he didn’t say anything?”

She shuffled a few papers, but answered before he got so edgy that he tried to kick her table again. “Just that it’s hard to put a timeline down since he wants to expedite the process, but he wants it to look normal so he’s going to set Gawain and Galahad up with another professor, help interview his replacement—hard since he’s also Monmouth Chair—and hand off all his duties to other people in his department.”

Lancelot rubbed at his mouth, then tipped over onto his back on the couch again. He put up his feet on the end, and didn’t move them when Guinevere cleared her throat. “I don’t know how to take that. Does he have a contingency plan? He’s got to—it’s Arthur. But is it a good one? Is he going to have a nervous breakdown two months from now? Is the lack of work going to—”

Knock on the door, and then Pellew poked in his head. He took in the situation, nodded to Lancelot and ended up looking at Guinevere, which was the sensible thing to do. Hopefully he had something that’d get Lancelot off the damn couch. “Terribly busy?”

“Not terribly, at least for me. I’m typing up some reports,” Guinevere said. “I’m not quite sure what Lancelot’s doing or how much thought it involves.”

She sensed Lancelot’s death-glare so she didn’t bother looking for it as she sweetly smiled at Pellew. He blinked a few times, eyebrow up, before coughing a bit. “Then I’d like to see you two in my office now, if you please. Something’s come up.”


	2. Unforeseen Consequences

“Do you think—”

“I don’t want to think about it. I want to get my gun out of my office, get my coat, and get moving already,” Guin snapped.

Honestly. She was halfway to both, and it wasn’t like Lancelot was the least bit in her way. Considering how she was already going on about what a great multi-tasker she was, she didn’t really have any right to voice that complaint.

He let her get away with it anyway; he was busy trying to get on his own coat, which for some reason had moved its arm-holes or something like that when he wasn’t…oh, never mind. They’d just been twisted back where he couldn’t reach them. He turned the coat the right way, then threw it on just in time to keep Guin from noticing. “So much for analysis.”

“So much for—oh, I almost can’t stand you sometimes.” Her hand had been going for some files, but it briefly zigged towards her stapler before coming back to finally grab the folders and slip them into her desk. She locked the drawer before reaching for her coat. “Look, they’re holding her downtown for us. The fastest way to find out is to go there and get her in an interrogation room.”

“Or—”

“Arthur said he’d be in a crucial meeting right now. Check his schedule.” Guinevere rounded the desk and stalked towards Lancelot with the kind of set to her shoulders that meant she would plow through anything in her way. But when he nicely stepped aside, she slowed and turned to look at him. “You do have it, don’t you?”

Lancelot rolled his eyes as he fell in behind her. “Memorize it every day over my first coffee.”

“It doesn’t change that often.”

“Well, I like to check daily anyway just to make sure I don’t miss any deviations. It’s called being thorough—I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept,” he icily retorted.

Of course, that didn’t get to her at all. She merely tossed her pretty hair, clipped back in its pretty barrette, and cut so sharply in front of somebody that their coffee nearly tipped onto Lancelot. For a moment, it looked as if she were going to toss an acerbic comment Lancelot’s way as well, but then she simply squared off her shoulders and strode away. Which pointedly said a few things all by itself.

Swallowing his own comments, Lancelot went after her and caught up just in time to make the same elevator. He didn’t think Guin would leave him behind—for one, Pellew had made it clear he was tired of scolding them—but she certainly did like her little power plays. “How long can we keep Swann anyway? She’s got diplomatic immunity, and besides that, I doubt MI6 is going to let us detain her for more than a day.”

“Depending on whether she’s here on their orders.” Guin idly fingered the cuff of her blouse, her brow furrowing like it usually did when she was running the odds through her head. She never could stick to a no-brooding vow for very long—she was like Arthur that way. “I just don’t think she is. Not sure why, but…it doesn’t feel like that.”

“You’d think Arthur would have seen that coming, for one. He seemed normal enough this morning,” Lancelot muttered. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked up at the ceiling. By the time they’d reached the garage level, he’d decided that no, he didn’t remember a Swann. “They have any connections we know about?”

Guinevere looked at him.

“What? I _know_ the moment Arthur said we could, you were reading through all his personal papers. You’ve got to be through them by now.”

“You’d be surprised. For a profession where a paper-trail’s a bad thing, he’s managed to amass quite the collection. Suppose that’s why he held them off for so long.” She absently reached into her pocket. Her hand stayed there for a moment before Guin took it back out, looking a little annoyed with herself. Well, she could wait till they got to the car for her panic-smoke. “Anyway, even that doesn’t cover all of it. But I don’t…think so. Swann’s in her early twenties. She’s risen fast, but she hasn’t been part of MI6 for that long. Her time and Arthur’s time don’t overlap.”

Lancelot thought about that as they walked out. “I don’t like that,” he said as he got in the car. His car. It’d been closer and he’d gotten to it before she’d gotten to hers, and they were beyond simple little plays like driving separately to places. Somewhat. He still enjoyed the almost-face she made at having to get in the passenger seat. “No connections. That might mean the worst, since they’d have to get to know each other before Arthur could appeal to anything in her.”

“Possibly. But that’s not her primary job, as far as Interpol can tell. If they wanted to send an assassin, they could’ve sent a slew of more qualified candidates.” Guin got her seatbelt on and then opened the glove compartment. She glanced in, shot an irritated look at Lancelot, and then closed it and opened one of the overhead compartments instead. Luck was on her side; she found the cigarette pack first thing.

“Hence why you’re not running out,” Lancelot muttered. He ignored the startled, then smug look he knew would be coming by putting the car into gear. Yes, he used her as a barometer to gauge how much he needed to care. So did she, even if it wasn’t for the same set of worries.

She didn’t retort. Which was not a good sign, despite her managing not to test the strength of her high heels. Lancelot looked at her again and she shrugged, stiff and jerky. He bit his lip as he peeled out of the lot.

* * *

“I just can’t believe it. I—no, you don’t need to repeat it again. I heard you fine the first time,” Gawain said. “I just…Arthur’s resigning?”

“I hope not, man. ‘cause if you did, after that hour-long talk you had with him and after the hour-long talk you had with _me_ when I could’ve been debugging my program…then I’d really worry. Like, if Tristan’s bringing home too much formaldehyde and killing off your brain cells again.” All that was visible of Galahad were his feet. The rest of him was hidden by reams of paper, both still connected and torn into sheets. He’d started working again five minutes after Gawain had sat down to talk, and from the looks of things he had gotten through a lot during their discussion. On paper, anyway.

Gawain briefly thought about smacking Galahad’s feet off the sofa-end. Instead he stared into the mug he’d been clutching, and after a moment, he decided that yeah, he’d just let a perfectly decent cup of joe cool into sludge. Damn. On top of everything else. “I…guess it was a good thing I decided to go for an Education degree, too. If things in Philosophy go really bad after him, I can always hide out there for a while. And you can do the same thing with Econ. Nice that we’re both doubling up.”

The rustling of the paper stopped. Then it started up again, but only so Galahad could dig his way out and sit up to glower at Gawain. “Oh, Jesus, _what_? Now you’re rambling and making no sense, and okay, _fine_. What’s bugging you?”

“Well…well, what’s not bugging you? I thought you’d be going nuts over something like this?” Gawain asked.

Galahad stared at him for a moment. The other man’s cheeks might’ve pinked a little. Then Galahad snorted and sat back. “I did. You just weren’t there—I went ballistic and Arthur basically told me to shut up and act like a man, and so I did because I think he might actually have socked me if I hadn’t.”

“He would not.”

“Oh, I think he was thinking about it, at least. I mean, of course he’s gonna apologize like crazy afterward and all that, but…well, whatever. I shut up and he didn’t hit me and we kind of had a good talk afterward.” A pause while Galahad’s eyes fuzzed out and he thought about that. “If you can call that kind of talk good. I understood where he was coming from, anyway.”

He looked like Galahad. He talked like Galahad—syntax-wise, anyway. But everything else was pretty pod-person-like.

“Don’t give me that look. I think I’ve been pretty damn mature for enough damn bad situations for you to stop doing that,” Galahad grumbled, going back to work. He finished the sheet in his hand, dropped it over the side, and then sifted through the piles on and stuck around him till he found the next one.

“Yeah, for what, the past six months? You’ve still got twenty-four years of hot-headed stupidity to make up for.” Gawain shifted in his seat, then grabbed the chair-arm and pulled himself off the spring that was suddenly poking him in the ass. He glanced at the clock; he really should’ve been grading papers, but…but hell, he was losing the best advisor he was ever going to get. In anything. He figured he deserved a couple moments of shock.

Galahad rolled his eyes. “What, you want me to blow up a second time? You’re not having a fit. Why do I have to?”

“You don’t! I’m just—fuck, never mind.” Which covered a lot of things, come to think of it.

Honestly, from a practical standpoint it looked like everything was going to be taken care of. Arthur was shifting them over to other philosophy professors, and while Gawain and Galahad weren’t going to be with the same one anymore and they’d have even less chances to see each other, and while whoever they ended up with wouldn’t be nearly as close to a, well, friend as Arthur had been…right, positives. There was no way Arthur would leave them with an asshole, so their new advisors would be friendly and not stupid and they’d still get their Masters on time.

Probably Masters for both of them, Gawain decided. When Galahad had first applied, he’d been thinking about a doctorate in either economics or philosophy, but Gawain really doubted that the other man would go on that long in philosophy now that Arthur was leaving. And Gawain wasn’t that interested in academia for its own sake, and anyway he needed to earn a living. He and Galahad would still have the financial aid package, but their pay rate would drop a bit; Arthur had been able to afford boosting it due to the Monmouth grant, but now they’d be on regular GSI rates…Galahad might switch to Econ there, since he could get higher-paying fellowships through them. And Tristan’s salary would cover…but Gawain didn’t feel comfortable not making a contribution himself—

“God, can you _think_ any louder?” Galahad suddenly said. He scooted to drop his head on the sofa-arm and loudly blew out a sigh. “’wain. Calm down. It’ll be okay. It’s not going to be great, because that’s what we’re losing out on here, but it’s not exactly the _Titanic_ going down. I mean—life sucks, man. Sometimes people have to leave.”

That—oh, now that explained the weird calm. It wasn’t that Galahad was taking things particularly well…well, maybe that was part of it. But it was also that he was having issues, and when he had issues, he either exploded—which was messy but healthier—or he pretended they weren’t there. Which was stupid and annoying and sort of part of being him.

“He’s not abandoning us, you know. He was telling me that he’d keep in contact as best he can, and if we’ve got any problems, we can still go to him. I mean, far as I know, he’s not planning to move away,” Gawain said.

Galahad flipped up the sheet he was holding to hide his face. “I know. Jesus, you sound like he’s your mom or something.”

“Hey, I swear I won’t laugh if you—”

“Oh, my God. I finally do like you say and try to think from Arthur’s point of view and decide that if he’s got the British intelligence on his ass, then he probably doesn’t need me bitching at him, and you think I’m like, losing my mind. See if I ever take your advice about maturity again,” Galahad snapped. It looked like he was going to stop there, but then he came back with a paper wad and threw that at Gawain’s head, as if he hadn’t been clear enough.

It missed by about two feet, but that was still close enough to touch a raw nerve. “Look, you asshole, I’ve got plenty to deal with already. I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay, because you know, I _care_. Even if sometimes it feels like I’m paying somebody back for one serious fuck-up in a previous life.”

Gawain flopped back into his seat, mostly because he needed to kick out at something and he didn’t want to break a couple toes doing it to the wall, and ended up nearly falling out. Cursing a bit, he yanked himself back into place. Then he stared at the ceiling. He was vaguely aware that that stack of essays wasn’t going to grade itself, but for once he just didn’t want to do the work.

A sigh from the couch. “Gawain, Jesus…look, I really did have that moment where I hated Arthur and thought he was a bastard for doing this to me and all that. And we talked about it and now I hate the guys who are putting him in this position, but…I don’t know. I’m tired of being pissed off. No, I’m not happy, but I think I’m already doing everything I can do and getting frustrated on top of that just wears me out nowadays.”

“You are working a lot,” Gawain said after a moment. He laughed a little, turning so he could look at Galahad. “I remember when I used to have to call you at five in the morning and scream for you to remember to get your shit done in time, and now every time I see you, you’re busy.”

“You seem stressed, too. Did I catch you kicking a trashcan the other day?” Galahad raised an eyebrow till Gawain ducked his head in embarrassed acknowledgment. Then he grinned; a trace of something sober sneaked into his voice, though. “Dude, you’re supposed to be the laidback one. Now you’re freaking out all the time and I just—what the hell’s up, man?”

Gawain shrugged. Then he ran what Galahad had just said through his mind again, and after much thought, shrugged again. Only with less nonchalance, because damned if Galahad wasn’t right, and damned if Gawain knew what was going on with himself. “Yeah, I should be really chilling now. You’re mostly out of my hair nowadays, the whole finances thing hasn’t given me a real problem since we moved here, Tristan’s Tristan…I’ve got less things to worry about than ever.”

“Old habits die hard?” Then Galahad shook his head as Gawain came to the same conclusion. “Okay, I don’t know either. But man, you need to stop. Stop spazzing and _caring_ about me and whatever, and…and um, do that New Age-y care about yourself thing. I don’t wanna be IDing you for a heart attack before you even hit thirty.”

“Yeah…” Something in that struck a much deeper chord than Gawain was expecting, or that he thought Galahad had been aiming for. He noted it down for thought later as he levered himself up out of the chair. “Yeah, well, I don’t think you’d get there first anyway…but that’d be really bad.”

Galahad…Galahad was looking at Gawain as if he were suddenly, deeply concerned that he had a crazy person in the room. Which might be somewhat justified. “Um, _yeah_. Talk about your morbid thoughts, man—Tristan already jumps out fucking _windows_ when you guys have a fight. I don’t even wanna think about what he’d do there.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I just—my head’s in a weird place right now,” Gawain hastily said, putting up his hands.

“Well, just so long as you get it back, ‘cause this whole being mature thing is new for me. I don’t know how much more it can take before I lose it again.” Which wasn’t totally a joke. And which was saying a bit more than just Arthur could account for.

Gawain had been going to finally do those stupid essays, but he stopped at that and looked back at the other man. At first Galahad tried to brave it out, but whatever growing-up kick he was on hadn’t included that, and it wasn’t long till he dropped his head and rubbed at the side of his face.

“Mariette and I are kind of…we’re having fucking coffee again. I feel like I just went back a year,” Galahad muttered.

“Minus the part where you two spend the first ten minutes talking about how you can’t stand each other every time you meet?”

Instead of glowering or loudly snapping about what a jerk Gawain was, Galahad just sort of sank lower into his papers. “Yeah. Pretty much. It’s weird and I don’t really know what it’s supposed to be or go towards or anything. I just buy coffee and sit with her.”

Gawain opened and closed his mouth a couple times as things to say came to mind, almost came out and were dropped at the last minute for stupidity or shallowness or annoying-to-Galahad capacity. Since honestly, he didn’t know quite where he was, and so he wasn’t sure how qualified he was to offer advice here. But he wanted to do _something_.

In the end he just backtracked and gave Galahad’s shoulder a squeeze. After a moment, Galahad reached up and grabbed his wrist. Only for a second; the next second, Galahad was shrugging Gawain off. So he gave Galahad a quick ruffle-cuff at the hair and then he went to go do his work. He was way behind on that.

* * *

Elizabeth Swann was young, blonde and quite pretty. A perfect picture of English womanhood.

“Minor nobility, though she’s been disinherited,” Lancelot muttered, perusing the file. “If you aren’t already glowering at her, which I’m sure you are.”

Guinevere sipped at her paper cup of coffee and ignored the local law gawking at her from the doorway. They’d been shown in by a brisk, professional female detective who’d then promptly disappeared, and now Guinevere thought she knew why. Pity the other woman couldn’t come back and give her some intelligent company. “Do you really think I give a damn about class differences right now?”

“Just an observation.” Something in the report must have been interesting, since Lancelot didn’t half-try to make his wounded tone sound convincing. “Was browbeating somebody who’s probably a contact and their cousin walked in on it, didn’t know what was going on and called the cops on her. Men’s toilet talk implies that MI6 is already coming down to get this wiped from the record, so we don’t have that long to talk to her.”

“Which Pellew already told us.” After finishing her drink, Guinevere put her hand on the knob and walked in.

She pitched the empty cup into the trashcan in the room instead of into the one outside in the hall. Swann didn’t bat an eye. “Squeezing blood from the stone while you can, aren’t you?” she said, lounging in her chair. “What’s your name? I want to make sure it’s passed on.”

“Guinevere DeGrance.”

That did get Swann’s attention. She sat up, then briefly turned her head as Lancelot came in and shut the door. “Oh…let’s see…Interpol.”

“Did our accents give us away?” Lancelot mock-cooed. Though the idiot couldn’t help preening a little when Swann predictably gave him a long once-over. He grinned charmingly at her as he pulled out both chairs.

Guinevere resisted the urge to look over and see what exactly Lancelot had in mind. “Would you prefer Elizabeth or Liz?”

“I’d prefer for full introductions,” Elizabeth said, staring at Lancelot with a slight smile on her face.

Lancelot smiled back in exactly the same way, folding his hands in front of him on the table. He cocked his head Guinevere’s way. “May I?”

Oh, that one. Well…it might work. It involved letting Lancelot have the lead with the interrogation and Guinevere wasn’t really fond of that idea, but if Swann thought she had Lancelot by the balls, then she might be more careless. And somebody had to be, and damned if it was going to be them or Arthur. “Certainly.”

“Can’t you give your own name without filing paperwork? Oh, well, I suppose that an international bureau is still a _bureau_ ,” Elizabeth sighed, studying her nails.

“Lancelot DuLac, and I do appreciate the value of a name.” Lancelot pretended to look through the file again. “I see you gave yours as Liz Borden. Bit more of an American joke, wouldn’t you say?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “When in Rome…”

“Rome’s across the Atlantic, and Lizzie Borden lived in Massachusetts, not New York City,” Guinevere pointed out. She put up a blank expression to the slightly annoyed look Swann shot her way. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for my lawyer,” Elizabeth promptly replied.

Guinevere wasn’t particularly amused. Neither was Lancelot, though he laughed and sprawled back in his chair convincingly enough. “Take the question less literally.”

The official age for Elizabeth Swann was twenty-five, but she had to be at least a year younger than that. She did have a good nonchalant act, but she didn’t have the patience yet to keep it up very well. Her fingers were already tapping on the table. “I co-run a boating business out of Miami and the prick rented a few from us, then tried to get out of paying for them. So I came up to discuss the matter with him and he attacked me. I was just acting in self-defense. I mean, if you compare his height and weight and mine…”

“Rather compare his combat experience in drug-wars to yours, I’d think. He’s in the hospital with a broken jaw and here you are without a hair out of place,” Guinevere said.

They stared at each other for a long minute after that. The tension was high enough so that Lancelot forewent his usual fidgeting, even with the folder in his hand, and Swann stopped clicking her ruby-red French tips on the table.

“All right, those boys outside don’t have a clue, but you two know who I am,” Elizabeth finally said. Her expression had turned considerably more serious before hardening that way. She scooted back from the table a bit before pulling herself out of her lounge. “Why are _you_ here?”

“As Interpol agents, it’s our job to be concerned with possible violations of international laws and disruption of global security. I understand you have quite a reputation in that department,” Guinevere replied.

“Particularly when it comes to handling fellow covert intelligence operatives,” Lancelot smoothly added.

Elizabeth looked at Lancelot first, then slowly scanned over to study Guinevere. She pursed her lips, then put up an elbow on the table and leaned her head on her hand. Her eyebrows went up inquisitively. “Just what is it you two think I’m here to do? If you know so much, then you should know that my scope of powers hardly goes so far.”

“Well, no, you’re not a double-o, but that doesn’t seem to have held you back before.” A trace of venom crept into Lancelot’s tone.

Guinevere slid her foot over and slowly, ruthlessly crushed it on top of Lancelot’s toes. If he couldn’t hold in his temper for a little longer, then she was going to send him for coffees and he could just swallow his damn pride.

At least he didn’t yelp or swear. He did shift in his seat a bit, but he covered well and made it seem as if he was just adjusting for a cramp.

“All right…so you think I’m here to do something big and splashy and illegal, and that it involves spying, and that it might involve assassination. That’s…interesting. Very interesting,” Elizabeth drawled. An odd accent drifted into her last few words, making her sound vaguely Caribbean. Then she dropped her arm on the table. Hard. “Look, I’m not saying anything while I’m in custody. I’m just a businesswoman who had a spectacularly bad customer, and who right now is thinking of taking up the American habit of suing. You don’t have any evidence, any hard accusations, and in fact, I think you’re just having a bit of fun with me.”

A light knock came at the door. Lancelot got up to get it and had a brief, whispered conversation with whoever was on the other side. Then he turned while grinding his heel into the concrete floor so Guinevere looked at him; he nodded.

Sighing, Guinevere twisted back to face Swann. “Well, you’re a businesswoman with diplomatic immunity, according to the British consulate. Very well, Miss Swann.”

Elizabeth’s brows drew together in confusion. When Guinevere got out of her seat, the other woman tensed up, and didn’t relax when Guinevere went for the door.

“Now that you’re a free citizen, you’re also free to join us for a coffee,” Lancelot said over Guinevere’s shoulder. He smiled at Swann. “No hard feelings, one pro to another?”

Guinevere thought that was laying it on a bit thick, and was about to let her feelings be known, but then she heard a slight clearing of throat from behind.

“I think that’d be very nice,” Swann said. “Thank you very much.”

* * *

Galahad threw his pen. He missed—damn, he was out of practice—and so he followed up with Jack’s pen. This time he was on-target.

One short, yelping jump later, a wild-eyed Jack had re-righted himself on his chair and was staring at Galahad as if Galahad had shot a gun at him or something like that. Big, betrayed puppy-eyes. How the kid never noticed his trail of devoted female classmates was beyond Galahad. “What on earth was that for?”

“Hey, I said I’d help you with your paper. I didn’t say that I’d sit around and wait while you daydreamed about a certain soccer star…”

Jack went dull red in the cheeks and shut his lips together. He dutifully picked up his pencil and, for the first time in the last ten minutes, really looked at the sheets of paper before him. “‘Football,’” he muttered.

“Man, we’re in America so I’m not putting an ‘American’ in front to tell the difference. And I’m sure as hell not calling our version rugby,” Galahad sighed. He covertly checked his watch. He’d gotten all the work he’d wanted to get done for the day done, but it was nearing midterms and someone had booked the room they were using for…ten minutes from now, they’d have to leave. “Look, you’ve gone to every single game of hers. Her teammates call you her personal cheerleader. Just get it out of your system already and ask if she wants coffee.”

“I _have_ ,” Jack said in a heated tone.

Galahad rolled his eyes. Thanks to Jack thinking he was some mediating agent—Gawain would so get a laugh out of that—all of those times had happened during his office hours, so he’d gotten to watch. And go from snickering to boredom to flatout exasperation. “No, I mean _ask her out for coffee_. Not ask her if she’s walking towards Starbucks and then almost have a meltdown when she says yeah, she thinks so. Jesus, Jack. You don’t even really like philosophy. You don’t need it for your major, and if you don’t ask soon you’re going to end up really, really hating the subject just because she likes it. Which isn’t, you know, healthy.”

“I know. I know, I know, I know. It’s just—not that easy.” Jack scuffed at the floor, then sighed and put up his arm so he could lean his head against his clenched hand. If he’d tipped his head just a little more, he would’ve stabbed himself in the temple with his pencil. “My mouth gets all dry and my hands turn disgustingly clammy. I keep expecting to find little puddles of water beneath them.”

“Yeah, well, either be disgusting and hope she likes you anyway, or end up resenting the hell out of her,” Galahad muttered.

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he was grimacing and checking for Jack’s reaction, but the other man was just staring blankly at him. After a moment, Jack frowned. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you just say?”

A load of bitter, confused bullshit that wasn’t going to make sense to Jack, but would make way too much sense to Gawain. Luckily, Gawain wasn’t around, or else he probably would want another talk—never mind, Galahad was taking too long to reply. “Jack, man, you’ve got two choices and…three possible outcomes. Choice one: you ask her out. Two outcomes—she says yes and we rush you to the ER afterward for extreme shock, and she says no and life really sucks but beer will help with that, trust me. I’ll even buy it for you.”

Jack was already making a face, but suddenly Galahad was just really fed up with the whole business and wanted something to _happen_ already. Whether it was good or bad…anything was better than sitting around in limbo and not quite getting it. Nope, he wasn’t a patient guy, but at least he didn’t have a whole bunch of missed chances to think about when he was drunk;

“Choice two: you don’t ask and just do this puppy-dog thing for the next couple of years. Taking classes you hate, having a shitty time in them and all for her and she doesn’t know. And eventually you’ll realize she’s been responsible for the worst time of your life and you’ll hate her, and you’ll turn into a bitter old fuck at the ripe old age of twenty-one or so,” Galahad finished.

That…had come out kind of harsh. True, but…Galahad put up his hands and rubbed them over his face, then pressed them to his temples. He thought about all that for a second.

Even Jack couldn’t help picking up on something there, but his manners had him lasting a full two minutes before he hesitantly cleared his throat. “Ah…Galahad. Is there…something on your mind? I…of course you’ve got a heavy workload and all but…”

“I’ve been really bitchy lately,” Galahad suggested. He grinned briefly at Jack’s stricken face. “Yeah. But that wasn’t…look, what I said to you just now was all for your benefit. It’s not me doing some weird thing where I need to yell at a stand-in to yell at myself.”

Jack’s eyebrow did a funny hitch where it started to arch, but quickly went back down, and actually it went too far that way so he ended up cock-eyed for a second. He flashed a wary look. “Um.”

“I let Mariette know exactly what I wanted a while ago. And doing things just because she liked them wasn’t responsible for the worst time of my time.” For one, Galahad thought, this wasn’t the worst time of his life. It was pretty damn close, but it wasn’t that bad.

The thing that made it sucky was that it was coming after the best time in his life so far.

“Um,” Jack repeated.

“I still don’t really want to go into details, okay? Just…what’s between her and me is not the same thing that’s with you and Jess. For one, you still don’t know for sure that it won’t work out.” Whatever the whole coffee thing was right now, it sure as hell wasn’t working. Not really. They were talking to each other again, but in that stilted, awkward way that made Galahad kind of dread running into her. And not in the way where he thought he’d blow his top if she brought up the wrong subject. “Ask her.”

Jack chewed his lip, looking torn.

“Ask her or I’ll get the locks on our door changed and won’t let you in till you do,” Galahad said.

That finally made Jack stiffen up. He stared at Galahad for a long, long second. “You would not.”

“Okay, no, but I might start teasing you about it in front of her. You only get one shot at a lot of shit, Jack. Try it and see if you can get anything out of it before you’ve got no shot at all.” Nodding, Galahad reached over and picked up Jack’s paper. He’d…he’d actually forgotten what the damn thing was about, so he quickly skimmed the top page. “And Jesus, if you’re going to include something about reality in a paper on Descartes, you can’t not include the _cogito ergo sum_ argument.”

“But everyone talks about that! I don’t want to just rehash things.”

“Man, that’s philosophy. Same basic questions, looked at by a zillion people.”

Jack started to object again, but changed his mind. Instead he slumped and sighed, poking his pencil at the table. “I suppose you’re right. No wonder I hate the damn subject too much.”

“You can still drop the class, can’t you? Dunno exactly how the undergrad schedule’s like, but—”

The other man waved a hand. “No, no, we can. We have to get the professor to sign off on it, but that won’t be too…you know, I think I will. If I drop the class, then the only times I’ll see Jess will be at games, and that’s with a couple hundred other people. Unless I talk to her.”

“Great.” One uncertainty out of the picture.

The next few moments were a little weird. Galahad felt way, way too smug and accomplished over what he’d just gotten Jack to agree to, considering he wasn’t usually the it’s-meddling-for-good! one, and Jack kept staring at him funny. Finally the other man put his fist up to his mouth and coughed into it a couple of times. “Ah…so, you know, I don’t think you’re out of chances either.”

“Jack, I was just giving you a kick up the ass. That in no way turns this into a mutual counseling session,” Galahad said. He read through a whole page of Jack’s paper before he realized that hey, if Jack was dropping the class, then he didn’t need extra help and Galahad could get back to his regular work.

“Oh, clearly, clearly. But…I…just want to say that a chance to start a relationship and a chance to fix one are totally different things and thus constitute totally different opportunities so it’d be a shame if you misconstrued the one for the other. And oh, I think the next person’s waiting for this room so I’d better be going and thank you very, very much for the help and advice and er, ass-kicking.” How Jack got that all out in one breath, and furthermore, without turning blue and falling over right afterwards, was pretty fucking amazing.

And it was distracting. The other man had grabbed his stuff and scooted the hell out before a bemused Galahad even got around to looking at whoever had just knocked on the door, and…it was Mariette. Figured.

“I’ve got the room for a review session,” she said stiffly, her heel clicking nervously against the floor.

“Yeah, I was just finishing up anyway. Let me just get my things and I’ll be out.” For a moment, Galahad almost added that he needed to go kill Gawain now, but this probably was one of those universe-was-laughing-at-you coincidences. When Galahad had checked the room’s listing, he’d noticed it was booked for one of the sections of the class Mariette was GSI-ing, but he’d just kind of assumed it’d been by one of the other three GSIs. Guess it wasn’t his lucky day.

He scooped all his crap into his backpack and zipped it, then stood up. When he went by Mariette, it looked like she might say something, but in the end her lips stayed together and Galahad just walked off, awkward tension trailing after him. Again.

Okay. Jack had had a point. Galahad really needed to do something about this, too.

* * *

“So just between us, what exactly have you been trying to accuse me of?” Swann delicately asked.

She tried a sip of her coffee, grimaced, and then pried off the lid to blow at it. Across from her and next to Lancelot, Guinevere was watching with a look of extreme irritation. Not that that was going to lead her to make things go quicker; she still seemed concerned that giving away anything would end up harming Arthur.

Which was a valid concern, but ultimately Lancelot thought it was better to find out as much as they could as soon as they could, and thus maximize the amount of time they had to deal with anything that turned up. He moved his feet away from Guin’s heels. “Arthur Pendragon.”

A flicker of surprise went through Elizabeth’s eyes. She frowned and sipped a little too quickly at her coffee so some splashed up onto her lip. After dabbing that off with her napkin, she put her cup down. “Well, that’s an interesting name to bring up.”

Guin stopped glowering at Lancelot and started paying attention to the discussion again. “So you’re familiar with it.”

“I’ve heard of him. Rather well-regarded professor at a local college, isn’t he? Not that I really keep up with his field…what is it? Ethics?” Elizabeth said. She leaned back, one hand drifting to toy with a lock of her hair. She knew exactly who they were talking about, that was obvious enough from the hard gleam in her eye. “Why on earth would you be worried about him?”

This time when Guinevere shot an annoyed side-look, it wasn’t because of Lancelot and he completely agreed. “Miss Swann, you’re no idiot no matter what the color of your hair might suggest. And neither are we. And I, for one, am not in the mood for word-games.”

Swann’s expression hardened, though she remained in a relaxed posture. “You sound as if you aren’t speaking as a professional now.”

“Does your business here involve him?” Guinevere said. Tone cool enough, but now the way she was tracing her finger through the condensation pooling around her iced chai was giving away things. She tipped her head to the side and gazed back at Swann through narrowed eyes.

After a moment, Swann’s mouth began to twitch, and soon enough she was laughing. She kept it low and under her breath, and then mostly stifled it by drinking some coffee, but her eyes were still dancing. “You think I’m here to kill him, or something like that?”

“Nice to see you aren’t pretending you’re not a professional like us,” Lancelot commented in a biting tone.

Swann flicked him a look, but still seemed amused. “Fine, I know who Arthur Pendragon is and what he used to do, and for whom. But how that necessarily means that we’re automatically connected—”

“You showed up in this city at this particular time and even if you’re based out of Miami, you’d be a fool if you didn’t have an ear to the ground for current MI6 politics.” Guinevere finally picked up her own drink. She stirred the ice cubes in it around with her straw before she tried it. “And it wouldn’t terribly surprise me if one or two of yours has already paid a visit up here.”

Oddly enough, Swann looked…annoyed. She heaved a sigh and moved restlessly about for a few seconds, then slouched still. “I think we need to clear a few things up. First of all, you’ve been misinformed; my primary’s not what you think it is. I’m sure London loves pretending that I answer to them, but Langley would be more like it.”

Langley…CIA? That hadn’t shown up anywhere in what Guinevere had showed Lancelot, and from the look on Guin’s face, she hadn’t expected that either. Why would the CIA have a British national running one of their operations?

“I do, however, have a…shall we say, unique understanding with London’s boys down south, so I suppose you could consider me better informed about their doings than most.” Swann looked pointedly at Lancelot and Guinevere, just in case they hadn’t already caught the insult. Her eyes dropped to her cup and her lip quirked; she wiped off the faint lipstick stain she’d left on the pressed paper. “You’re right. They have contacted Pendragon before, but only to let him know about an old colleague of his.”

The last old colleague of Arthur’s who’d popped up had apparently been the catalyst for this whole mess, so Lancelot wasn’t very reassured to hear that. “Clayton?”

“Who?” The confused surprise in Swann’s face seemed genuine enough.

“Who else?” Guinevere asked. The point of her heel briefly and painfully introduced itself to Lancelot’s ankle.

Swann rolled her eyes. “Oh, ask Pendragon if you’re so concerned. All I’ll say is that it was a friendly, one-time visit and that as far as I or that part of MI6 is concerned, Pendragon isn’t on our radar. If someone has a problem with him, they haven’t brought us into it and I’m happy to stay that way.”

“You certainly could have done a better job of checking local circumstances before you planned your trip up north,” Guinevere said after a moment. Her tone was sarcastic but distant: she was already disengaging. Then she was getting up, and dragging at Lancelot’s arm so he had to go as well. “It was an…interesting meeting, Miss Swann.”

“Yes, though not the kind I’d care to repeat.” Slightly strained smile. “Have a day.”

Lancelot couldn’t help but roll his eyes, even though he was also rather irritated at the moment. “Oh, we will. Guin, what are you doing? We’ve barely found out anything, and on top of that, if we go now I can guarantee we’ll not be able to find her again for further questioning.”

Guinevere didn’t answer him, but instead continued at a fairly brisk pace till they were outside of the café. Pity it was so crowded, since otherwise Lancelot would’ve repeated himself a bit more forcefully. Instead he had to follow along behind her until they were out on the sidewalk.

Then Guinevere stopped, and so suddenly that Lancelot almost walked right up her heels. He swerved to avoid that and grabbed onto the side of the café’s front window to right himself. “Guin—”

“If she’s not MI6, then why is there so much documentation showing that she is? For that matter, why is the British consulate getting involved? Collaboration or no collaboration, if she’s CIA, then it should be much easier to just leave it up to them to get her away from the local law,” Guinevere muttered, pulling out her cell. She positioned herself so she could look back into the café, but only if she strained her neck…which she was indeed doing. “I think we’ve just been thrown a red herring.”

Lancelot was in a slightly better position and glanced inside. “Swann’s not calling anyone. She’s…somebody’s joining her.”

“They’re waving at us. You’re doing a lovely job of keeping out of sight.” With that snap, Guinevere pivoted and started off towards the car. “Did you at least get a good look at the man?”

“Yes. Are you calling Arthur?” Lancelot asked.

Guinevere got out her keys, but was a little too distracted by whatever she was hearing to get the right one into the door. She didn’t even toss a vicious look in Lancelot’s direction when he took them from her and got into the driver’s seat. He leaned over and opened the other door for her, then started the engine as she got in.

“His line’s busy,” she said. She chewed on her lip, then put up a hand and almost chewed at a nail.

Lancelot bit back a swear-word. His first impulse was to whip towards Avalon, but if he wanted to try and match the man with Swann to an ID, they’d have to go back to the office. “Try Vanora.”

Guinevere was already re-dialing. “Go to the office. We need to update Pellew. It’s New York City—we need more resources if we’re going to be searching the city for MI6 agents.”

“Which is why I have a cell—” Lancelot stuck his hand into the right pocket, but it was empty. Then he remembered and this time, he let the curses flow. “Goddamn it.”

“I _told_ you not to wait to get your new one. My God, how you lose so many of them…oh, hello, Vanora. It’s Guinevere. I was just wondering if you knew where Arthur was…I’ve tried his phone but can’t get him…oh…” Guin put her hand over the cell “…never mind, go to Avalon. She says Arthur just asked her to postpone all his afternoon meetings.”

Lancelot sat and drummed his fingers on the wheel. Then he gritted his teeth and glanced over his shoulder, making sure no idiot was about to ram them from behind as he peeled out into the road.

* * *

“I hope he can stay in the city,” Tristan said. His hands didn’t stop chopping vegetables.

Gawain, however, stopped browning meat. Then he swore and hastily jumped back to it when the smell of char reached his nose. He yanked the pan off the stove and glanced it over, decided everything would still be edible, and then dumped it in a pot with canned broth for the stewing part.

It was Tristan’s day off. He’d been down to the Conservatory to spend a big chunk of quality time with his hawk, and usually after that he was even more relaxed than usual. But he’d seemed a little distracted when Gawain had first come home, and then a comment like that coming after Gawain’s long ramble about the Arthur-situation…“Did—has he said something to you? I—hey, he’s already told you about this, right? You aren’t hearing it for the first time through me or anything, are—”

“No, we already talked about it.” After running his knife through the last onion, Tristan put that aside and started dumping handfuls of the veggies into the pot. His left shoulder twitched. “He hasn’t told me exactly what he’s doing afterward, though, and I don’t know if he can work in academia again. I don’t think Merlin will let him go looking bad, but it’ll still seem weird to people.”

And oddly enough, academics did seem to do a lot of judging based on first impressions, which wouldn’t help. “You think he’ll try for another teaching job?”

Tristan cocked his head as he stepped back from the stove. He ran his hands under the faucet and dried them off before poking into the refrigerator for a beer. “Honestly? No, not in a university. He doesn’t take the same risks twice if he can help it. So he might be thinking of a small town now, since trying to stay low-profile in New York City didn’t work out.”

“Did he say he was thinking of moving?” Gawain asked, a little bit of panic creeping in. He’d just gotten used to the idea of not having Arthur as an advisor—Arthur not even being in Avalon anymore was still sinking in—and not even having Arthur somewhere in the city?

…would be even worse for Tristan, come to think of it. He didn’t have many constants in his life; he didn’t need very many, but the ones he did, he needed very badly.

“No. I…I don’t know,” Tristan muttered, tone a bit curt. He flicked the top of his beer bottle into the trashcan with a little more force than really necessary. He wasn’t really one for drinking with dinner either, though he was more than willing to pull out a bottle afterwards. “I know he’d be thinking about it. But that’s all.”

“Well…he already tried running from them, kind of. So if he doesn’t like repeating ideas that don’t work out…” Gawain shrugged, wanting to offer reassurance but not really sure how. Or what, considering he wasn’t Arthur.

Tristan nodded, but not very decisively. He turned around as he took a pull from his bottle and rooted around on top of the fridge for a couple garlic cloves. When Gawain reached out to squeeze his shoulder, he stopped for a moment. Then he put his beer down and reached behind himself to grab Gawain’s hand while his other hand nimbly got the garlic.

Well, since he was there, Gawain figured he might as well drop his arm around Tristan’s waist and rest a chin on the other man’s shoulder. He searched around for a change in subject and his gaze happened to land on the calendar. “Hey. So did you see about putting in to take Spring Break off?”

“Oh, that already went through. I meant to tell you yesterday, but you were asleep when I came home,” Tristan said. Bare statement of fact, not accusing at all. There was a slight trace of curiosity in his voice. “Are we planning to do something?”

Gawain pursed his lips a couple times. “I was kind of thinking about something. Not that I’ve booked anything yet…it’s still just an idea. I mean, right now it looks like I’m going to spend it trying to catch up on my sleep…”

Tristan turned his head. Then he let go of Gawain’s hand and twisted all the way around; his other hand suddenly crunched its heel down on the cloves, squishing them against the cutting board so the sharp, distinctive garlic smell rose into the air. “What?”

“Going back to Los Angeles. Just for a day…it’s still probably not a good idea for me to stay in town longer than that,” Gawain said. He moved back in case Tristan wanted some more space, but it looked like the other man just wanted to be able to see Gawain’s face. “I’m not even planning to call any of my old friends to let them know I’m coming. I think—I don’t really want to risk even a little getting caught up in all the old shit in my life.”

“So why?” Tristan asked.

Yeah, straight to the hard part, even if his expression wasn’t judgmental. It took a couple moments for Gawain to get it right in his head, since he really didn’t want it to come out too weird. “My…grandma’s grave. Galahad and I used to visit it every month to clean it up and leave something, but we haven’t been back since we came to New York. I just…it sounds silly, but I just want to go and see it. It just feels like everything’s changing and people are moving around—that’s not a bad thing, but I want to go while I can still talk Galahad into it.”

“You think he’d say no?”

“I…I’m not sure. He loved her like I did, but him and graves…he’s always been kind of like, it’s just a body in there and not the person. And lately he’s just been really different. Growing up.” Gawain laughed a little, both at himself and at the situation. “Used to be he whined a lot, but he’d still follow my lead. He’s finally figuring out his own lead, I think.”

Tristan raised his eyebrows at the last part, but didn’t comment. 

“And…well, I kind of…wanted to…since you took me to see…” Saying ‘yours’ just sounded like it was some drunken bet, and that was about as opposite as you could get from what Gawain wanted to say. Not that he really knew how to say it, thus the stammering and awkwardness. “If you want to go. It’s not what you’d call your usual vacation—”

Tristan cupped Gawain’s face and soundly kissed him. Which was a very succinct and pointed answer, and when they separated a moment later, Gawain had a feeling that he had a pretty silly smile on his face. Whatever. The only one looking at it was Tristan, and Tristan obviously didn’t care.

“I’ll start checking up on the LAPD,” Tristan said.

Gawain opened his mouth. Then he closed it. It wasn’t like Tristan didn’t know what he was doing there, and it was really nice of him to do that without Gawain even asking him to. And it’d probably be really helpful.

“Great. Now I just have to tell Galahad,” Gawain grinned. Which he wasn’t looking too forward to, but Tristan’s kiss was still on his mind.

Tristan made a little bit of a face, but a small smile sneaked onto his own face as he began to turn. Gawain made a grab at him and spun him back around and kissed over the surprised noise he made, and in short order they were stumbling back against the fridge, Tristan’s hand clawing at Gawain’s back. “Wait, dinner.”

“It’s stew. It can take care of itself,” Gawain muttered. He pulled at Tristan’s shirt, then shifted his hands to the other man’s hips. “People can’t.”

“Oh?” Raised eyebrow.

In the time it took for Gawain to drag his attention back to the conversation, the moment had gone sober on him. He sucked on his lip, looking at Tristan through the strands of hair falling between their faces. Tristan stared back, eyes dark and wide and possibly a little shaky deep in there.

“Well, they can, but only so far. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that.” Gawain raised his right hand and stroked the hair out of Tristan’s face, letting the ball of his thumb linger on those cheek-marks. Then he pressed forward and covered the other man’s lips with his own, and it wasn’t long before Tristan was reciprocating.

* * *

Vanora got up as Guinevere and Lancelot walked in, a concerned expression on her face. They immediately stopped.

“You just missed him,” Vanora said. “He stopped by and asked me to rearrange his afternoon schedule because he had an important interview he needed to go to.”

Guinevere frowned. “Interview? Not a meeting?”

The other woman nodded emphatically, then bent down to riffle through the papers on her desk. A moment later, she came up with a scribbled note, which she handed to…Lancelot, because he’d nipped in at the last moment to get ahead of Guinevere. “I said you’d called and he left this for you. It must be important since his writing is absolutely atrocious—I can’t make out a word.”

“He says he’ll meet us at…our office,” Lancelot said, squinting at the scrap. His head shot up and he and Guinevere looked at each other.

“Who’s he seeing there?” Vanora asked.

Guinevere took the scrap from Lancelot while he was getting out the car keys. “No idea, but I believe we’re about to go see,” she said. “Thank you very much, Vanora, but we’ve got to run.”


	3. Revised Paradigm

Galahad rubbed at his temples and tried to ignore the musty smell of the closet in which he and Jack were standing. “Jack, man, you’re my roommate but that doesn’t give you the right to shove me into small dark places.”

“I promise I’m not about to make a pass at you,” Jack hastily said.

That…that didn’t really help, aside from increasing the uncomfortable atmosphere. No, it wasn’t homophobia—it was exasperation almost to the point of strangulation. God, give the guy a crisis situation like some girl slipping down the steps and possibly breaking her ankle and he was fine. Cool, collected, quick-thinking, able to make ten other girls around him faint with his firm jaw. Then give him an ordinary situation that required him to say one damned sentence, and what did he do? Closet.

“Jack, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to. On the other hand, I’m also pretty sure that Jess is hanging around outside right now, wondering what the hell was behind her that made you go that white before dragging us in here,” Galahad muttered. “She’s not going to go away either. Any moment now she’s going to—”

The knock on the door nearly sent Jack leaping into the opposite wall. Considering there was barely a yard between the two, that would’ve hurt a hell of a lot.

“Jack? Jack, are you all right?” Jess called.

Jack jerked his head sideways and down, clearly spitting out a bunch of silent curses. Then he pushed himself back to a standing position, but only so he could look pleadingly at Galahad.

“He’s working on it. I think we’ll be out in a second—is anybody around?” Galahad asked.

“Do you need me to call the paramedics?” Jess wasn’t quite panicking, but the level of concern in her voice had jumped a couple of good-sized notches.

Galahad was really tempted. Tempted enough to pause till Jack was almost bursting from obviously trying to _think_ Galahad into doing what he wanted. “Nah, he’s just having a moment. He’ll be fine in another minute.”

A weird kind of spasm took over Jack, momentarily making his face look as if it’d blown up like a balloon. He flapped his hands around a little, and then spun in place before finally glaring at Galahad. “I can’t do this,” he hissed.

“It’s one sentence!” Jesus Christ, where _was_ Gawain’s meddling when you needed it, Galahad thought. He’d know how to ask Jack to get on with it without throwing in a few dozen expletives, like Galahad really wanted to do. “Look—we’re not leaving till you do.”

“Guys?” Jess sounded as if she’d calmed down and gone right into suspicious curiosity.

Jack flinched, then attempted some kind of puppy-dog look at Galahad. If he’d made an actual pass at Galahad, that might’ve worked better; honestly, who the hell did he think Galahad was? “You don’t even have to look at her right now. Say it.”

“But how? What if she still thinks I just mean it as a friend?” Pause. “That…might work better, actually…”

“No. No, it wouldn’t. It’d just leave you right where you are right now, and that just means that a couple weeks from now, we’re gonna be in another closet. And I fucking hate closets,” Galahad said. He started to look at his wrist, but then realized it was too dark to even see his watch. Then he had a thought and pulled out his cell-phone; it looked like they’d already been standing there for a good five minutes. “Jack.”

The other man just stood there. His feet shuffled a little bit.

Galahad grimaced. “You’ve got twenty more seconds before I do something.”

“Do what?” Jack whispered.

“Hey, guys. Come on. If you want to have a private conversation, you can just say that you want me to go,” Jess called through the door.

“No, no, you don’t need to go. Actually, you really, really need to stay. It’s important.” It had been…actually, Galahad had been too busy glaring at Jack to count off, but he figured it’d been at least twenty seconds.

Jack’s eyes bugged out when he realized where Galahad was going with it. He even jerked forward a little, but then he pulled back and just gestured desperately with his hands, his lower lip jutting out. In the weak glow Galahad’s cell-phone screen was emitting, it had a really weird gleam to it.

“What? Why? What’s going on?”

“Jack’s got something to say to you,” Galahad said. “Jack?”

Death-glare from him. “I _hate_ you.”

“Whatever.” Like Galahad hadn’t been hearing that kind of crap from Gawain for years. He checked the time on his cell-phone again, then stifled a sneeze as the dust got to him. Actually, he did hope that Jack got things done soon, because he still had to go down to the financial aid office and do some talking with them to straighten out his paychecks. God, he hated doing his taxes. “So?”

“Well?” Jess echoed. “What is it? Jack? Are you all right? Is Galahad…um…”

Jack shot one last look of anguish towards Galahad before turning towards the door and…thumping his forehead against it. He stayed slumped like that, though after a moment, he did put up a hand to keep his nose from being squished. “No, no, we’re not doing anything. We’re standing in a closet, is all.”

“Are you sure? I don’t think…standing in a closet is quite…what you usually do.” Jess was really, really trying, and if that wasn’t a sign of how she’d take Jack’s proposal, then Galahad was a human-sized dandelion.

“Oh, no, definitely not,” Jack hastily said. He jerked back his head like he was going to bang it.

It looked like maybe at the last minute, he realized either that it’d hurt a lot or that Jess would hear it and that’d be another thing he’d have to explain, but Galahad reached out and grabbed Jack’s shoulder just in case. The guy’s reflexes did tend to go really screwy around Jess and he probably wouldn’t have been able to stop in time.

Jack stiffened. Then he suddenly grabbed Galahad’s wrist, really hard. And when Galahad tried to twist it around to silently tell Jack to loosen up, the other man twisted it like he was wringing out a rag. Galahad started to bite back a curse, then decided that hell, he’d been polite long enough. He opened his mouth.

“Jack, what on earth—”

“Jesswouldyouliketogetcoffee?” Jack mumble-spat. If he’d crammed his words together any more, he would’ve gotten white noise from their overlap.

A moment of silence.

“Um, I’m sorry…I didn’t catch that?” Jess said.

Galahad pulled his wrist free, then soundlessly grimaced as both blood and pain rushed into his hand. Then he kicked Jack in the ankle and squeezed the guy’s shoulder—careful to reach around so that Jack couldn’t grab him again.

Jack ground his hand into his face, his shoulders going first up and then slumping down so far that it was amazing his arms didn’t disappear into his sides. “Would—would—”

Well, Galahad wasn’t going to kick him again. He wanted Jack to get over it and ask her out; he didn’t want to be a dad or a big brother or…whatever the hell. He’d done about all that he could, and it was all up to Jack now.

“Coffee? Sometime? Just…you know, going out…together…and…coffee,” Jack finally got out, voice hopeful and wary all at once.

“…are you asking me out?” Jess said after a moment. Thank God, she had a brain. And while she sounded a bit surprised, she didn’t sound as if she were rejecting the idea.

It seemed that _that_ got through to Jack, because he managed to say the next part without so much stuttering. And in whole sentences. “Well, yes, I suppose. I…I think you’re really great, and I was just wondering if you’d like to go sometime…but if you don’t, it’s utterly fine with me. I won’t take offense and I just want you to know that whatever your decision, I’ll completely respect every par—”

“When were you thinking about?”

“—because in no way do I want you to feel—ow!”

Okay, maybe Galahad was going to kick Jack one more time. But that was it: he was letting go of Jack’s shoulder and everything. Totally hands-off now.

Jack paused, then slowly pushed himself off the door. He raked his hand through his hair a couple times—which didn’t really get it out of his eyes—before stuffing his fidgety hands in his pockets. “Um…um…oh, you have that exam tomorrow night, so tonight you’ll probably want to study…”

“How about after the exam? If it goes well I’ll want to celebrate, and if not, well, I’ll need time to recover. Coffee sounds good for that,” Jess said. She waited a couple seconds, then rapped on the door. “Ah, Jack? Do you think you can come out of there now and talk about it? It’s—a little odd talking through the door, and there are some people walking through the hall who’re looking at m—”

“Oh, of course!” And Jack practically ripped the door off its hinges getting it open, he was suddenly so happy and enthusiastic. Seriously, he was practically glowing.

He was almost whacking Galahad in the goddamn face with his flailing elbows. Jack completely didn’t notice and just jumped out, babbling excitedly while he also missed how he nearly scared Jess into stumbling as well, and…God, Galahad didn’t even really want to hit him. Not really. Maybe just a smack on the side of the head. But really, it was like he was turning into Gawain or—

Galahad blinked and stopped in the closet doorway. “Mariette. Hey.”

“Hi…were you just in there?” Mariette said, ducking her head and craning it a bit to look, as if she hadn’t known the closet had existed till just now.

“Oooooh…” Jess said. While looking in an odd way at Jack, and Jack was…Jack was…

…furrowing his brow and obviously thinking hard, and suddenly Galahad was beginning to think maybe he’d walked into something a little more planned than Jack freaking out over Jess for the umpteenth time. But okay, he’d hijacked it and turned it around on Jack, so—

“Hi, Mariette. Thanks for coming,” Jack said in a really, really fake bright voice.

Mariette shot him a warily questioning look. “Sorry I was a bit late. Now what did you—”

“Oh, look!” Jess said.

She pointed. Galahad didn’t look, and in fact tried to step out of the way, but Mariette did look and Jack was a fucking _quick_ shover, and Mariette basically tumbled them both into the closet. What a time for her to start wearing fucking high heels again.

“Quoi—” Mariette started.

_Slam_ went the door.

And Galahad said: “Shit.”

* * *

It would’ve been an exaggeration to say that Guinevere and Lancelot steamrolled their way back into the Interpol office. They walked. Quickly. With purpose. And since Interpol generally hired people with at least half a brain, nobody was stupid enough to get in the way and so they got through normally crowded hallways and rooms fairly quickly.

“It doesn’t say where?”

Guinevere rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake, you got to see it first. Did you see any specific location in that scribble?”

“No, but Arthur’s always scrupulous about detail,” Lancelot said, as if that was a logical retort. “Did he mean our personal offices, or just the office in general, or…yes?”

Isolde blinked and took a step back, startled by the snap in Lancelot’s voice. He did usually show a surface appreciation for her chest. “You two are back. Pellew wants to see you.”

Lancelot pulled at his hair, making sure that if each curl hadn’t been messily kinked before, they damned well were now. “Again? My God, can’t it wait?”

Both Guinevere and Isolde stared at him for a moment. Tactless as he could be, usually Lancelot at least had a sense of proportion: one did not act like one’s superior was an annoying uncle demanding some frivolity. Then Isolde slowly blinked and shook her head. “No, he said to send you in as soon as you could be contacted. We’ve been trying to call, but—”

Guinevere frowned and checked her phone, then swore. “Goddamn it, the battery’s gone out. And Lancelot—”

“You _still_ haven’t gotten a new mobile?” Isolde said. Then she shook herself and moved aside. “Never mind. You’d better get going.”

After shooting her a glower, Lancelot stalked on by. Personally Guinevere didn’t think much of Isolde in general, and in this specific situation, wasn’t inclined to revise that opinion, but that was a little bit stupid. For one, if Lancelot went into Pellew’s office like that, that was going to mean they’d be stuck there even longer before they could find Arthur.

“You panicking yet?” Lancelot hissed.

Guinevere looked sharply at him. “I’m concerned. But we know where Arthur _should_ be, so—”

“So? So we’ve been running around half the day already and if that isn’t a deliberate run-around, I don’t know what is.” Lancelot paused, then grimaced. At least he wasn’t so out of it that he didn’t realize he certainly no longer knew how to use the English language. “Maybe Swann wasn’t here for the worst-case scenario, but somebody definitely is yanking us around.”

“And in that case, we need Pellew on our side so _don’t be an arse_ ,” Guinevere snapped.

The laugh that came from Lancelot was slightly nervy. He fiddled with his tie, pulling it loose and then snugging up the knot again. “Not till later, right?…and ‘arse’? Guin, your Welsh is showing.”

She almost hit him, but fortunately for Lancelot, they reached Pellew’s office right there and it wouldn’t have looked well either to get into a scrap in front of it. So instead she gave him a hard shove forward to get him through the doorway, then daintily pivoted after him.

“Sorry we took so long downtown—” Guinevere started. Then she stopped.

Pellew and Arthur had been sitting down, but they’d risen as Guinevere and Lancelot had come in. Arthur was already up on his feet, but Pellew was going at a more leisurely pace. In addition, he seemed to be somewhat distracted by all the papers spread out before them, which argued against an immediate crisis situation.

For a second, Guinevere actually wanted to snarl for making her worry so much, and she hesitated from doing it more because she wasn’t sure whom she had in mind as a target than because of how irrational that would’ve been. Then she got herself under control again and smiled tightly at Arthur. “Oh—”

“You’re here,” Lancelot said, sounding started but curt. He’d seen Arthur the moment he’d gone in—that had been why he’d stopped so suddenly and had needed the shove—and he still was looking at him. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

Eyebrows quirked, Pellew seemed a little embarrassed for Arthur’s sake. He glanced back and forth between Lancelot and Arthur, who was sensibly stalling by blinking and pursing his lips, before lifting a hand. “Ah, Lancelot, I’m sorry to interrupt, but if I could have a word with you and Guinevere…”

“I’ll go wait in—” Arthur started.

“My office,” Guinevere finished. She didn’t look at Lancelot; she already knew that’d have ratcheted up his temper a bit more and that he’d be showing it. She stepped back as Arthur passed them at a casual pace ,then leaned forward for a quick word. “Good to see you.”

He frowned and looked at her twice, obviously catching on to her unsteady undertone. It seemed as if Lancelot was going to say something as well, but then Pellew stepped forward and the window of opportunity for that snapped shut. Lancelot had to put in a bit of effort not to show his aggravation at that to Pellew.

“While you two were downtown, I received a pair of rather odd phone-calls,” Pellew said, coming over. He went past them and shut and locked the door, then crossed back over to his desk. “One was from a known MI6 contact in London, and the gist of it was to mind the neutrality of Interpol—actually, I’d been expecting something like that and the surprise was in how mildly it was framed. But the other was a total surprise—from an old Naval colleague of mine whom I haven’t spoken to in years. James Norrington.”

Guinevere was startled as well, but because the only James Norrington of which she knew had been a long-time MI6 operative in the States till a couple years ago, when he’d abruptly dropped out of sight. That had happened in the middle of a rather nasty flare-up in the Caribbean’s perpetual druglord wars, but there’d been rumors that it’d been more of an internal issue.

“I’ll tell you more about that in a moment, but first I’d like a summary of your interview with Elizabeth Swann,” Pellew continued.

When Guinevere checked, Lancelot was already looking at her. She slightly moved the shoulder closest to him, whereupon he sighed and absently began to stab his toe into the floor. “Seems like that was a bit of a false alarm,” he began. “There’s actually not that much to tell…”

* * *

The phone was ringing. Tristan’s shoulder was really comfortable, and whatever he was tracing on Gawain’s back felt nice. But the phone was ringing. Damn.

Gawain eventually stretched out an arm—making Tristan’s hand move, so damn again—and scratched around for it. He got it just as Tristan finally began to stir, making a few slightly grumpy noises.

“When the squirrels come out of hibernation, I should look into training them to bring phones,” Tristan muttered.

That…would be kind of cool, actually. Especially if they could also find the damn things, since half the time Gawain didn’t know what pocket his cell was—“Yo, Jack. What’s up?”

*Gawain! Hi! Actually, it’s Jess—oh, wait, here’s…no, shouldn’t you…why _me_? You were the one—oh, all right. Gawain, um, we’ve got a bit of a bother.*

Well, okay, Jess was a truthful person. But she also was very genuinely nice and thoughtful and…and hey, if she was sharing Jack’s phone, did that mean they’d finally worked things out. “What happened?”

Some more hissing, and then Jack’s voice: *We, ah, we shoved Galahad and Mariette into a closet and they’ve been very quiet. So we were, ah, wondering if you knew what the signs of…of…well, not homicide, but any…physical…altercation…*

Tristan raised his head and gave the cell an incredulous look. Then he put his head back down and gave Gawain an exasperated look. “Did they really—”

“Fuck, yes, they did. Fucking hell…” Gawain barely remembered to slap his hand over the phone so Jack and Jess couldn’t hear him “…stupid undergrads…” And took his hand off “…Jack, Jess, _don’t_ move. I’m coming—wait, which closet? Where are you?”

“How long have they been in there?” Tristan added, already shifting to get their clothes.

Good question. “How long has it been?” Gawain repeated. “Why can’t you just open it and check on them? Or if you’re scared of their reaction, ask somebody else to open it?”

*…stuck…* one of them replied.

Gawain prayed really, really hard that the rest of their answer wasn’t what he thought it was. “What?”

*The door. It made this click sound when it shut, and I did try the knob,* Jack said, sounding more than a little sheepish. *But the knob won’t turn. I told Galahad and Mariette that—at least, I called it at the door—but I haven’t heard them say anything back.*

*They’ve only been in a few minutes,* Jess added. But she sounded worried.

Hell, Gawain was worried. Gawain—he had his pants on. When had that happened?

“I’ll tell you after we’re sure that Arthur doesn’t also have to call Mariette’s parents and explain to them why he’s shipping back their daughter’s body,” Tristan said, scooping up somebody’s car keys from the floor. He pushed his hair out of his face and stuck his foot into his shoe at the same time. “Though it really would be easier to resituate just one grad—”

“Tristan, I love you, but if you finish that sentence—what? No, wait there, we’re coming. If they come out before then…um, stall them. No, actually one of you go get the janitor. If the one staying hears anything weird, call me again and hold the phone up to the door. I’ll yell at them,” Gawain hissed. Then he snapped his phone shut, and he and Tristan were out into the hall.

* * *

“Don’t just go off—” Guin started.

“Arthur, what the _hell_ is going on?” Lancelot snarled, stomping in. He let Guinevere come in, then yanked the door shut and locked it. “Some MI5 bint showed up in downtown and completely gave us the run-around, and then you’ve been out of touch, and when you were in touch, it was to meet us here? You’ve got ten seconds to tell me _exactly_ why I shouldn’t be trying to handcuff you to something right now.”

Arthur was holding a Styrofoam cup of what was probably tea, since no coffee odor was coming from it. He blinked, took a step back so he could turn to fully face them, and then put his cup down on a shelf. “For one, I could pick Interpol issue in less than ten seconds.”

“There. See, he’s being witty, so stop panicking and let the man talk.” Though Guin’s stalk to behind her desk—behind her desk, and if her positioning didn’t already say plenty on her own—made it clear she wasn’t too pleased at how the day had gone either. She whirled her chair around, then sat down with her hands delicately folded together. Just like when they’d been talking to Swann.

Lancelot stood. If he was furious with someone, he wasn’t going to bother hiding it in hopes of getting a better response. If they’d done something to upset him that much, then in his opinion he shouldn’t be the one needing to do something. “I’m calm, thank you. I’m very calm. Very calm and very curious to know exactly what—”

“I received a job offer,” Arthur abruptly said. “It was a little odd, so I wanted to ask Edward’s opinion, and it turned out he’d received some collaborating information…”

It took a second for Lancelot to recall that that was Pellew’s first name. He vaguely remembered Pellew once telling them to feel free to call him by that when off-duty during some dinner party, but it felt like violating a natural law just to think of the man by that name. And generally speaking, he was more lax about being respectful than Arthur was. “Have you two been talking a lot lately?”

“You’re not having an affair with him, are you?” Guin asked. Her joking tone was undercut by the palpable edginess in her voice. So much for staying cool as ice.

For a moment, Arthur just stared at her as if he didn’t quite know whether he needed to shout for help. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then frowned as he dug in his pocket. Then he pulled out his cell; the buttons beeped loudly in the tense silence.

He finally looked up, glancing between them with a half-surprised, half-apologetic expression. “Oh…did I miss something? I didn’t realize you’d called so much…I was at the U. N. and had to turn off my phone.”

Lancelot started to make a smart remark—and it would’ve been a very smart one. Smart as Einstein. But then he processed what Arthur had just said and he completely lost track of his train of thought. “The—the U. N.? Who the _hell_ wants to kill you?”

Moment of silence. Then Guinevere and Arthur both turned to look at him: Guinevere as if he were some loud drunken idiot in a pub, and Arthur as if Lancelot seemed in danger of needing an ambulance.

“So what’s the problem?” Guinevere said in an overly pleasant voice, turning back to Arthur.

Who still looked a bit taken aback. He blinked a few times, then slowly came over to stand in front of Lancelot. “There isn’t—well, there may be a problem, but I think you two have the wrong impression. I’m sorry about that…let me start over. Earlier today I received a phone call from the U. N.—”

“Have they picked up on MI6?” Lancelot and Guinevere both said. Lancelot added a pointed look at her afterward; she and he weren’t thinking so differently after all, so she could stop with the smugness.

Arthur shook his head, then stopped. Now he looked pained. “No, they-- _damn_ it, this is not going how I wanted—all right, all right. The U. N.’s known about MI6 for a while, if you mean in general. If you mean my…situation…I hardly think that they would’ve bothered even finding my name on their own. I’m nowhere near important enough.”

“How could it not—” Then Lancelot stopped. He hadn’t gotten it all out, so if Guin was even looking as if she were thinking about giving him that face…she wasn’t watching him at all. She was still staring at Arthur. “So what were they calling about?”

“A job,” Arthur said, sounding as if he would’ve been bemused if he hadn’t been so worried. He kept looking at them and gradually his expression leaned more and more towards concerned. “No, not that sort. A…kind of teaching position. For their analysts.”

Guinevere slowly started to sit down, but when she noticed that neither Lancelot nor Arthur were moving that way, she got back up. “The U. N. offered you a job? And you asked Pellew about it?”

Lancelot looked around, found the spare chair, and sat down. He ignored the quick glare he got from Guinevere. He also ignored the disconcerting effect of having to look _up_ at Arthur; better to feel irrationally annoyed for the other man’s unconscious superiority than to embarrass himself with weak knees. “What’d he say?”

“Well, he tried to hire me again—” Arthur paused. Then he started looking about for a seat himself, but not before Lancelot had caught that grimace.

“…Pellew tried to hire you,” Guinevere slowly, calmly repeated. An idiot could’ve seen that for the warning it was.

Being very, very far from an idiot, Arthur immediately looked regretful. Then he squared his shoulders and met her probing gaze straight on. “I think a better way of putting it would’ve been that he encouraged me to seek employment in Interpol. I doubt he intended to hire me himself, and anyway I made it clear that I’m not interested in any sort of field position. But they do take on analysts and also instructors.”

Arthur teaching rookies how to be international policemen. Lancelot thought about it, opened his mouth to make fun of the idea, and then thought about it some more. Actually, it might work. And it’d certainly be more convenient and more reassuring if Arthur was working in roughly the same location and system in which Lancelot and Guinevere were.

“I still don’t think that’s terribly appropriate. I don’t—Pellew’s usually more on than that. What was he thinking?” Still muttering, Guin absently spun her chair around. She stared at her computer’s screensaver for a few seconds before turning back, clearly not quite having figured out her reaction yet. Then she put up her elbows and pushed her fingers through her hair. “The U. N.? Interpol? Are you seriously thinking about this?”

“You could still teach and get that annoying need of yours to try and improve the world out of your system,” Lancelot thoughtfully said. He rubbed his lip, then glanced up at Arthur. “Don’t take this to mean I haven’t forgotten to be irritated about the first half of today. We still need to talk about your equally bad habit of _not discussing things with us_.”

The other man frowned as he cautiously leaned against the wall. “I didn’t mention Edward’s offer because it never went anywhere. I was going to speak to you about the U. N.’s, which is why I’m here—”

“Arthur, I know you mean well, but if you think that the U. N.—” Guin started sharply. She stopped just as abruptly and drew in a breath, pushing distractedly at her bangs. Then she looked down at her fidgeting fingers, her lower lip dragging in and out of her mouth so that the tracks where her teeth had pressed in were briefly, whitely visible against the red. Her brows pulled down and she suddenly flattened her hands against the desk, then just as suddenly jerked around to stare at the far wall. “You don’t have to sell yourself for our sake,” she said in a tight monotone. “I want you to stay here, but I don’t want to be the reason you put yourself up for auction.”

Lancelot’s tongue got to it first. “Well, that’s a new one. What happened to manipulating him into the ideal situation?”

She shot him a glare for that, but it didn’t half-carry its usual venom; she was still more focused on Arthur, who was studying Guinevere with an odd kind of dawning comprehension on his face. “As if I haven’t had plenty of time to see what happens when you—” she was looking at Arthur “—twist yourself to fit the circumstances. I fell in love with the bits of the man I could see behind the professor act—lovely and charming as it is—and I’ve spent the last two years waiting and hoping to see more of him. I am _not_ prepared to settle for you going into hiding again. Even if it’s in plain sight.”

And…Guin had a point. The U. N.—or Interpol—could give Arthur the kind of protection he’d need. And teaching or consulting for them in some capacity would suit him, but only so far as what he wanted to do. He hadn’t mentioned at all whether that’d be all he’d have to do in order to earn his asylum.

Arthur had a huge collection, both physical and mental, of information on the British intelligence’s covert operations. For years he’d been counting on the threat of it to keep him safe, but now it seemed like that wasn’t enough. But finally deploying it would drop him right back into the kind of political and tactical maneuvering he’d left behind when he’d quit MI6, and moreover, he’d sooner or later end up having to betray more old colleagues. The whole Clayton situation had nearly sent Arthur into a nervous breakdown while he’d decided what to do, but this would be like that times…Lancelot couldn’t even calculate.

“She’s right,” Lancelot said. He ducked his head so he didn’t have to see either of their expressions: Guin would be surprised as always and he didn’t have the patience for that, and Arthur just wasn’t going to make Lancelot feel much better about himself. He was already late catching on as it was, and having Arthur look grateful to _him_ just pointed out how much better the other man was. And he didn’t even realize. “If they’re offering because of what you can tell them about your old agency, then it’s not worth it. You’re not the information-brokering type, Arthur. It’d kill you to do that.”

It was silent in the room for a long moment; the sound of Guin’s clock ticking was not only audible, but also felt as if each click was a heavy lead weight banging on Lancelot’s shoulder. And then…Arthur _laughed_?

He…Lancelot looked up, and Arthur was. Quietly, disbelievingly, with his hand over his mouth and his eyes moist and relieved. “Oh…no, there’s been such a misunderstanding here,” Arthur said. “No…it’s not like that. The U. N.’s only interested as long as I can continue to prove that I’m no longer active in that and have no desire to be active in it. They aren’t—they don’t have the same taste for gamesmanship as an intelligence agency.”

“But…then why are you talking to Pellew?” Guinevere leaned forward, frowning.

“Because the offer came out of the blue, and at first I had the same worries you had, so I talked to him to get another perspective on the situation. It actually seems that you can trace the offer back to a James Norrington—”

Lancelot straightened up. “But he’s MI6.”

“ _Was_. He had to speed up his retirement and dropped out about a year and a half ago,” Arthur explained. He absently wiped at the side of his nose, then slipped his hand into his pocket. “We crossed paths a few times, but we didn’t work the same territory so…but anyway, just after he retired, he sent somebody up here to sound me out about whether I’d be inclined to leave him be.”

“Which you never mentioned…” It looked as if Guinevere was remembering she needed to maintain her annoyance from earlier as well.

Arthur flashed her an apologetic face and she visibly lost concentration. Then he shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’ll give you the details later, but at the time it seemed rather…back then I thought it was better if you knew as little as possible about that. I told his messenger I would, and I thought that was the end of it. But now here comes this job opening, and I’m leaning towards thinking that it’s Norrington’s way of thanking me.”

“Or indebting you?” Lancelot suggested.

“Well, that’s what I wanted to see Pellew about, since he’s ex-Navy and so is Norrington. They actually seemed to have been fairly close acquaintances at one point, and he’s assured me that Norrington doesn’t mean it that way.” A crooked, ironic smile briefly graced Arthur’s face. “In fact, he told me it’s probably a better offer than Interpol can give.”

The smile didn’t last too long. Barely ten seconds later, Arthur had shoved both hands into his pockets and was warily watching them, lips in a flat tight line. His expression flicked from disappointed—so momentary Lancelot almost missed it—to concerned to nervous.

“I’m sorry I didn’t speak to either of you about this before,” Arthur quietly added. He ruefully hitched his shoulders back. “But it mostly seemed like castles in the air, so I didn’t want you to worry about something I wasn’t even sure was going to turn out real.”

“We were worrying more about what we didn’t know about. God, in the past few months I think I’ve been more frightened than I ever was when someone was holding a gun on me,” Guin muttered. She looked down at her hands where they were pressing flat on the desk. Then, still looking at that, she slowly stood up.

She finally had to lift her hands to move her chair out of the way. Lancelot thought she was going to go over to Arthur, but instead she stopped beside the desk, head slightly down so a few locks of hair fell into her eyes. He shifted in his seat to lean his arm against the other end of the desk.

“If it’ll make you happy, then do it. As long as it’s what you want, and it’s not forcing you to be what you don’t want to be, then I have no objection,” she said.

“She does make a lot of sense, doesn’t she?” Lancelot tried to laugh, but his throat was too tight and so the sound got mangled into more of a wet croak. He shifted again to drop his hands between his knees, his fingers twisting and knotting around each other on their own. “When she stops being a cranky quip-first bitch.”

Guin flicked him a side-long, narrow-eyed look. “Takes one to know one.”

He almost replied, but was cut off by Arthur’s brilliant smile. Maybe it didn’t make a sound, but it didn’t need to in order to completely take over the conversation.

Arthur came over and stopped in front of the desk, in the middle, and after a moment, Guinevere and Lancelot moved so he could pick up a hand from each of them. He pressed their hands together and kissed both at once, eyes almost too bright compared to the slight shadow in which his hair threw them. “Thank you.”

Lancelot grabbed Arthur’s hand and used it to pull himself out of the chair. He slipped in next to the other man and pressed his forehead into Arthur’s shoulder. “It would make you happy, right? I know it’s not a university…”

“No. It’s different and I know it’ll take me a while to get used to it and figure everything out, and I doubt that even then it’ll be perfect. But I think of all the options I’ve got now, it’s got the most potential,” Arthur said after a moment. His shoulder twitched a little beneath Lancelot’s brow. “I want to try. I’m—looking forward to trying.”

“Then that’s good enough for me,” Guin murmured.

And for once, Lancelot didn’t feel the need to have the last word.

* * *

Galahad just stood there for a good thirty seconds. “They shoved us in a closet.”

“They did,” Mariette echoed, sounding just as wondering.

After a quick calculation, Galahad figured that Jack plus Jess couldn’t possibly weigh enough to hold the door against him—well, Jess did have some muscles in her legs. But the floor outside was slick linoleum, so it wasn’t like she could get good traction. He backed up a little, put his palms flat against the door so he knew where it was, and then threw himself forward.

The door bent, shivered, and then…didn’t give. Galahad bounced back a few inches, teetered and then caught himself on the wall to his right. On his left, Mariette sighed.

“Do you even know if it locks?” she asked. Her clothes rustled as she moved in front of him, and then there came the sound of a knob turning. Turning and clicking weirdly. Mariette gave it a shake so it rattled, then stepped back. “It won’t go all the way.”

“Oh, Jesus.” This was one of the older buildings on campus, and now that Galahad was thinking about it, he just had to remember reading something about a class going out for a fire drill and then not being able to get back into the room because of a crapped-up door lock. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck, _no_.

He banged on the door, waited to hear the tail-end of a couple of gasps outside, and then banged on the door again.

“Jack!” he shouted. “Jack, you’d better still be there or I swear to God, I’ll—”

“I’m here! I’m here!”

“Jess?” Mariette said, loudly and with enough bite to make Galahad stare at the slightly darker shape he guessed was her. Usually she didn’t go off at other women nearly that fast, and especially when she didn’t know them that well.

Pause. “…yes?”

Mariette muttered a couple nasty things in French beneath her breath. Then she cleared her throat. “Is something wrong with the door?”

“Ah…it worked all right a couple minutes ago,” Jack said. He was starting to sound sorry about what he’d just done. He’d better. Not that it was going to increase his life expectancy, which right now was about ten seconds longer than whenever Galahad got out of the closet, but he still should be fucking sorry. “The knob turned and it opened and all, so I don’t know…” door knob rattling, door still not moving “…I…well, that’s rather odd. I—wait—I—damn. _Damn_.”

Galahad took a nice, deep breath. If he needed to explode, he was going to need it. “Jack? Just what kind of ‘damn’ was that?”

“Well—”

“Was it a ‘the door’s broken and you’re stuck’ kind of damn? Or was it a ‘we locked the door because we’re stupid mushy undergrads but we’ll let you out because we like living’ kind of damn? Think really, really carefully, because the answer could just determine your continued existence,” Galahad said. Only two curse-words, and both of them mostly quotes. He thought that that was pretty good. Gawain would’ve been proud.

For that matter, Mariette wasn’t hissing at him to be nicer or whatever, so she agreed with him. “ _Mon Dieu. Dieu, s’il vous plait, disez-moi que la porte n’est pas…_ ”

“Ah, Galahad? Can we get back to you on that? Don’t worry, everything’s under control here, but I just want to, ah, well—”

“—make sure everything’s all right before we try anything,” Jess helpfully supplied.

“You can stop praying,” Galahad said to Mariette. “I think God’s too busy laughing to listen.”

Good thing, because after a stunned moment, she cut loose with a stream of French swears that, if God had been listening, definitely would’ve ended up on her column of bad deeds. She scuffed about in place a little, then abruptly stomped at the floor. Then she cursed again, but this time at her shoe’s heel, which was a little too high for real stomping ease, apparently.

“I don’t believe it,” she finally muttered. Galahad’s eyes were readjusting to the light and he could see her irritably shake her head as she leaned back against the wall, arms folded over her chest. “What are they? Children?”

Nah. Kids were too small to have pulled something like this off. Plus they usually had better instincts about what was and was not going to get them dismembered. “I get first dibs on Jack when we get out of here. I have to live with him.”

Mariette just blew out a long, annoyed breath. She didn’t say anything or do anything.

Galahad’s feet were starting to hurt some from all the standing, so he leaned back against the wall as well. It was stuffy inside the closet but not too hot or too cold, and they did have enough room so that they weren’t right on top of each other. Still awkward as all hell, but survivable, he decided. He’d just…have to do that thing where you concentrated on pretending you were somewhere else.

Outside Jack and Jess were furiously whispering to each other, but none of it was loud enough to make out. At least they hadn’t been so stupid as to run off.

“Galahad?” Jack suddenly called. “Mariette? Are you going to be late for anything? Can we call in for you while we, ah, figure out how to get the door open?”

Oh-- _shit_. Right after remembering he had a cell phone, Galahad discovered that the damn thing didn’t have reception. And judging from the frustrated noise Mariette had just made, she didn’t have hers on her. “Jack, you don’t happen to know what the building manager’s number is, do you? Or see a janitor around?”

“…no…” Sounded like a crushed puppy. Big deal.

“So call Gawain—he knows that kind of shit. Then one of you go look for a janitor, just in case.” It was too close to dinner-time for them to have much luck of finding one, but it was worth a try.

Jess and Jack both caroled a very desperate, apologetic-sounding ‘okay!’ Mariette snorted. “That was sensible.”

“Well, somebody has to be and it didn’t look like they were up to it. I can be pissed off once I’m out and can actually get to them,” Galahad replied.

There wasn’t really a lot to say after that, and ever since they’d started with the whole coffee thing, Mariette hadn’t been babbling or bitching just to fill in the awkward silences like she’d used to. So she didn’t say anything either, and they ended up just kind of standing there. In the dark. In the fucking closet.

“Why did your roommate think this would work anyway?” Mariette finally asked.

“Hell if I know. Every time I start to think that Jack’s got some brains in him somewhere under all that stuttering Britishness, he goes and pulls shit like this.” Not being able to see anything was beginning to get to Galahad a little, so he pulled out his cell phone again. The greenish light from its screen flared up to garishly highlight Mariette’s raised eyebrow. “I don’t have service in here.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know. I saw when you pulled it out the first time.”

“So what was that look for?” Galahad retorted.

Mariette blinked a few times, then frowned. “What look? This look? This is my face.”

“Yeah, yeah, your face. Looking at me like I’m an idiot.” That one hadn’t shown up for a while, but once it had, Galahad remembered just how much that expression irked him. “It’s not my fault we’re stuck in here. Why’d you show up, anyway? Didn’t you think it was weird that Jack would call you—and how did he get your number, anyway?”

Her expression became even more exasperated. “From you, I think. I did not give it to him. I don’t know why he called. That’s why I was asking him that when he pushed us in here. Don’t blame _me_.”

“I’m not blaming you.”

“Oh? Did you even listen to what you were just saying? Or did it fly out of your mouth without a thought, like usual?”

“Wow. You’re still a total bitch without coffee.”

“Ah, thank you for the proof that I’m right.”

“You—” Then Galahad stopped. After a couple moments, he just shook his head. He wanted to laugh too, but she’d probably take that the wrong way. He wouldn’t be laughing because anything was funny, really.

Mariette must have been holding her breath waiting for him to come out with something else, because about ten seconds later she kind of gasped for air. Her heels clicked a rapid tattoo against the floor before her latest shuffle ended in her dejectedly slumping back against the wall. 

“Still the same,” she muttered. Her voice came out muffled; Galahad pressed a cell-phone button so the screen relit and saw that she’d turned to press her face into the wall. “I don’t think I can take you much longer.”

“…it’s a utility closet,” Galahad warily said after a moment. He wasn’t really sure that she meant that, given the deeper echoes of weariness in her voice. “Even if those two outside have completely lost it, it can’t be too long before we get out. I’m sure you can be an adult about it.”

Amazingly enough, she didn’t take the bait. She just inched her head around to look at him with an oddly tired kind of exasperation. “No. I can’t—I can’t take this…this…I apologized, you’ve had your time and space, and now…what? Do—do you or do you not believe in second chances? Because I want to start again, to try to not make another mistake—but I cannot live this without knowing if you will even let me try.”

Mariette lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye, long and steady. Then she sighed and turned away again. Her shoe clacked hard, and she belatedly cursed and bent down to fix something about it.

“I can’t believe this,” Galahad’s mouth said. His brain was pretty busy thinking things over, and he thought that was the proper reaction so he was a little irked when he got glared at. “Is this stuck-in-closet thing actually working?”

Her shoulder jerked hard as Mariette yanked at her shoe. “You…you…” Some half-intelligible French which, if Galahad was translating right, meant ‘crass bastard.’

“Don’t go off at me, damn it. I’m—look, I’m not used to the idea of second chances. Giving or getting them,” Galahad snapped.

“Shut up,” Mariette muttered. Her head cocked, and then she repeated herself in a much stronger tone. “Shut _up_. Yes, you have—you had a different life than me, you had all those problems, but sometimes I think you use them as an excuse. You were brave enough to get past them to come here, but you aren’t brave enough to stop blaming them. I’m no princess in a tower—I’m a woman and I failed and my—I have dirt on my knees, but I am not the type to stay on those forever. I want to get up and walk again.”

And she did stand up just then, and leaned back against the wall with her arms tightly clutched around herself. Mariette stared at him, the dark not enough to mask the hope and challenge in her face.

Galahad’s throat tightened up. His hands clenched and unclenched, trying to provide some kind of release for the tension in him, but that didn’t work. He knew that this was do-or-die time, last chance, and if he wanted a say in the outcome he had to do something now. And he’d never had a problem with that before; he’d never had a problem saying what he wanted even when it was just an ordinary day, with some random unimportant discussion going on. He’d never had a problem with that even when guns and the real, mouth-drying possibility of death was in the same room with him.

But right now, just looking back at her, it was the hardest thing to just to open his mouth. It took all his willpower, and then he was looking for what to say but he’d already used up—

\--the door cracked sharply, then groaned as it opened. “Gala—”

Mariette turned and Galahad felt the chance go, and he just made a wild grab for her. He was so focused on that that he sort of lost his balance, but she couldn’t take his weight so that they ended up falling backwards. He heard her hiss as her back hit hard against the wall, and then he’d pressed his mouth down on hers.

For the longest moment of his life, her mouth didn’t move. He thought-- _shit, she’s going to push me off and say I was assau--_ and then her lips parted, and her arms went up around his neck.

The pieces of his life didn’t fall together right then, but they made a whole lot more sense.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Mariette was mumbling in between enthusiastic kisses.

“French mumble French mumble,” Galahad was going. Or something like that. It sounded like French, and Mariette’s reaction made it obvious that she could understand it.

Jack shuffled up beside him, looking a bit less hang-dog. The other man drew Jess with him, and when Gawain checked, he saw hands being held, all right. “So…I guess it worked out?”

“No, I’m still going to kill you la—” Galahad was muffled by Mariette yanking his head back around.

“You’re grinning.” Tristan leaned onto Gawain’s shoulder, which was his way of grabbing for a hand. There was a slight jingle as he slipped his lockpicks back into some pocket; they hadn’t been able to get hold of a janitor or a building manager, but Tristan apparently never left the house unprepared for a jammed door. Even when he was scrambling to dress after a good bout of on-the-kitchen-floor sex. “It looks like it hurts.”

Gawain laughed. “It does. It’s totally worth it, though. It’s okay—it’s not the most painful expression Galahad’s made me have over the years.”

Totally oblivious, Galahad and Mariette kept kissing. Any moment now they were going to stop and have a spat—Mariette had already switched to muttering about not tearing her blouse—but that didn’t spoil it at all. Actually, it convinced Gawain even more that things were going the right way. Maybe not the least painful way, but definitely the right way.


	4. Shift

Mariette turned first, her knowing snort alerting Gawain. Tristan probably had picked up on the approach before her, but he stayed facing the stone, hands behind his back and head slightly bowed. It was only the second time Gawain had ever seen him in a cemetery, and the first time had been under fairly stressful circumstances, but Gawain didn’t think it was too much of an assumption to say that Tristan showed the dead a lot of respect. He’d also never really been one for the kind of crass black humor that usually showed up in people who had a lot of contact with corpses.

“Don’t even,” Galahad said, moving around Gawain. He glanced at the stone, then shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to scan their surroundings. “Jesus. My skin is crawling.”

“I checked. Nobody who you don’t want to see is going to show up without us having at least fifteen minutes’ notice.” After a slight nod of the head, Tristan backed up and went to stand by Gawain. His fingers briefly brushed the back of Gawain’s hand.

Gawain smiled a bit, but couldn’t really keep it on his face for too long, even though he wasn’t in a _bad_ mood. He just kind of…well, he knew his grandmother wouldn’t mind either, but the setting was getting to him too. “Well, I’m pretty much done.”

Galahad didn’t answer. It looked like Mariette was going to ask him about it, but she refrained before Gawain had to do any crazy gesturing. Instead she pretended to tend to her hair, and Gawain and Tristan wandered off a little to pretend to read some of the other epitaphs.

“Oh, Jesus. Like I can’t tell you’re all watching.” Snarl firmly in place on his face, Galahad stalked over to stand in front of the gravestone. He had his back to all of them and Gawain, for one, couldn’t hear anything from the other man, but when Galahad walked off a moment later, the frown was gone. Not that Galahad looked thrilled, but he did look more…relaxed.

He kept on going, clearly meaning to head back to the car. When Mariette figured that out, she went after him and gave him a smack on the arm when she caught up. After a brief bickering spell, his arm went around her waist and her head on his shoulder.

“Thanks,” Tristan suddenly said, and from the way he was facing both Gawain and the tombstone, he wasn’t just talking to Gawain. He hadn’t said anything to the grave, but had just waited for Gawain. “I—thanks for bringing me.”

“Yeah, she heard it too.” Gawain put up his hands around Tristan’s face, kissed him, and then tugged him towards the exit. He was done here now, he thought. Time to get on back home.

* * *

“It’s been really nice. These past few weeks with the, ah, the…”

“Jack.”

“Sorry! Was I talking over you?”

“…we’ve got to work on this. As much as I’ve prepped my Dad, he’s still going to scare you senseless.”

“…pardon? I don’t—”

_Several seconds later_

“Can we do that again? That was—that was wonderful.”

“…did you just ask me if you could kiss—”

_Several minutes later_

“That was _amazing_.”

“Thanks, Jess.”

“Oh, don’t look so smug. Now, about my parents…”

* * *

“Arthur? Arthur?”

Blinking, Arthur stared into his tea. Then he shook himself and turned around, looking apologetically at Guinevere. “I’m sorry, I completely missed that.”

For a moment, it seemed as if she were going to make a pre-morning coffee tart comment. But then her face softened and she smiled, reaching out to grab his hand. “Are you all right?”

He’d left the first job he’d ever really loved, with a subdepartment half-built and advisees halfway through their studies and many cherished friends. And now he was looking at carving out a new career, uncertain of how he’d do and whether it’d work out, and…he didn’t quite know about that. He already missed the university.

“God, that racket in the street last night kept me up.” Lancelot suddenly wandered in, yawning and stretching his arms. He blearily took in their sharp, startled stares without a speck of surprise, then made a beeline for the coffeemaker. “Oh, Arthur, I forgot to ask last night but tell me you’re not going to try walking to work now. I can give you a lift, and then you’re helping to make my commuting more environmentally-friendly.”

“Who says that you’re driving?” Guinevere pointedly asked.

The two of them glowered daggers at each other…and then the coffeemaker pinged and began to drip coffee, and their attention was suddenly, entirely absorbed by the stream of dark brown fluid coming down.

Arthur laughed quietly, the taste of wistful nostalgia still a ghost in his mouth but that of anticipation slowly swelling to crowd it out, and then smiled when they turned to look at him. “Well, I think I’m ready.”


End file.
